Monday, April 20, 2015

This
was published on this blogspot at the time and left there for over a year
but then Iona, via Ms O Brien and Mr Quinn made a formal complaint to
Google stating that the publication of this on the blogspot was a
violation and falsely asserted this under the DMCA Millemmium Copyright
Act so as to ensure it was removed....therefore
Iona have blatantly lied so as to have this posting removed as it may
put them in a bad light.....

Thanks to the Streisand effect,
by now, everyone has heard how Rory O’Neill’s (aka Panti Bliss)
interview on the Saturday Night Show was censored after a legal
challenge made by John Waters who objected to being described as a
homophobe. He clearly felt this was libel and RTE duly folded quicker
than you could say “spineless”.

Also discussed were Breda O’Brien and
the Iona institute who were described in similar terms. You can read the
full transcript here.

As you can imagine both the censorship
and the terminology used to describe these people caused quite a stir.
With one side crying censorship as Rory simply stated something what is
believed to be true, and the other side arguing that it was ridiculous
to libel people simply because they believe in “traditional” marriage.

So I have decided to analyse the opinions of these individuals regarding
homosexuals and marriage equality to ascertain whether or nor the
“homophobic” label is warranted.

Iona

The Iona institute, to which O’Brien is a
patron, has long lobbied against equal marriage. During the
Constitutional Convention Iona made a submission arguing against equal
marriage, in which they made this rather audacious claim;

The social sciences confirm what every known society in
the world has known instinctively, namely that marriage between a man
and a woman is uniquely beneficial to society and to children. This is
the case even though some individual marriages may be dysfunctional and
harmful to children (as can any other type of family).

There are two major flaws with this
statement, the first being that it is a total fabrication. The social
sciences do not say this, in fact, almost every paper which studied children of same sex parents showed
no differences in outcomes when compared to children of heterosexual
parents. Secondly, there is a caveat in big blue lettering on the front
page which explicitly states that same-sex parents were not researched
in this study therefore no conclusions about same-sex parents can be
drawn from this study.

Yet here we have Iona trying to use it to argue
against equal marriage. Of course the folks at Iona were called up on
this and they attempted to backtrack.
They claimed that they meant heterosexual families are the “most
beneficial family form that we know of from the point of view of
children” as “there are no large national surveys that allows us to draw
reliable conclusions about the children of same-sex couples”. These two
little caveats were wholly absent in the submission, so this is simply
moving the goalposts after being caught red handed.

Also, the “that we
know of ” line is again untrue for reasons stated above, we know
children of homosexual parents do just fine. Finally, that last sentence
true, there were no large national surveys done at the time Child
Trends completed their research, however, that was a decade ago, there
have been many completed since. So Iona ignored a decade of research in
an attempt to make their point.

The only piece of research which Iona
seem to get right was that there are no large scale studies done, and
this is something members of Iona have been saying continuously to
negate the research which has been completed thus far.

However, in the
words of Judith Stacey and Timothy Biblarz, two sociologists;

research based on statistically representative national samples, are rarely employed by scholars who publish in Child Development and Developmental Psychology.
There is a simple explanation for this. Large-scale survey research
methods are too blunt and rigid to adequately address the complex and
nuanced questions that are generally at issue when scholars attempt to
assess and compare child development under different forms of parenting
or adult intervention. Most child development studies profit from having
in-depth observations of children with multiple reporters (parents,
teachers, clinicians, researchers, etc.) and instruments. Research often
benefits when rapport develops between the researcher, the observer,
the parents and the children

They go on further to say that if it was reasonable to dismiss studies researching children of same-sex parents then we

would have to dismiss virtually the
entire discipline of psychology. The vast majority of research in child
development, and in the field of psychology more broadly, would be
invalidated as unscientific.

In essence, if David Quinn and the
patrons of Iona, none of whom are credited scientists let alone
sociologists or psychologists, think they can categorise studies as
flawed based on sample size then may I suggest they write a paper
telling the thousands of sociologists and psychologists that they have
been doing it wrong all these years. They will surely be greatly
rewarded for revolutionising these two academic fields.

Iona’s disastrous employment of research
doesn’t stop there. After casting such a critical eye on the dozens of
studies which all portray homosexual parenting in a positive manner,
they seemingly accept any paper which tells a different tale without a
moment’s hesitation, regardless of how flawed it is.

The now infamous Regnerus study was published in 2012 and was promptly promoted by Iona.
To say the study was flawed is an understatement. Regnerus was paid by
the Witherspoon institute to design a paper which could be used in two
upcoming Supreme Court cases: Windsor v. U.S. and Hollingsworth v. Perry. To
achieve this Regnerus used skewed methodology. If one is to accurately
compare the outcomes of children of heterosexual and homosexual parents
then like versus like must be compared.

Therefore, long term homosexual
households should be compared to long term heterosexual households.
Regnerus did not do this. He compared stable heterosexual households
against single parents, many of whom weren’t even homosexual but simply
were reported as having a same-sex relationship at some point. In fact,
there were only two stable homosexual households used in the whole
study. There are many more flaws which you can read here.

You might forgive Iona for originally supporting it but they have never
redacted their support and David Quinn, Iona’s Director, tweeted an article
in support of the article only last month. How can they honestly
support an article which was not only flawed, but intentionally so.

Imagine a researcher was paid to portray a
racial minority as worse parents than white people. And the researcher
did so by intentionally using a methodology he knew would give him the
results required. Then organisations used this research to limit the
rights of the racial minority. Pretty darn racist I would say, so how
would characterise the behaviour above?

John Waters

John Waters hasn’t written much about homosexuality or equal marriage but the little he has written I find quite disturbing.

This is really a kind of satire on
marriage which is being conducted by the gay lobby. It’s not that they
want to get married; they want to destroy the institution of marriage
because they’re envious of it;

This is really an attempt to discredit an
institution, the nominative institution on which society and human
civilization is founded. If you do that there will be consequences, and
one of them is that marriage will become a nothing;

It is a deliberate sabotage of the
culture”, continues Waters, “and the relishing of the destruction as a
result. Gay marriage is a satire…. But sometimes you have to allow
things to happen for the consequences to become obvious.

Waters negates the possibility that
homosexuals want marriage equality simply because it is equality and it
will help them be happier. He then attaches ulterior, malicious
motivations. He believes that homosexuals don’t actually want equality
but they are simply out to destroy. This is propagandist fear-mongering
at its best: applying malicious intent to a group of people for benign
actions. This is active irrational fear and hatred of homosexuals. It’s
homophobia, even in its strictest form.

Breda O’Brien

Breda O’Brien’s opposition to equal
marriage (much like David Quinn’s and Iona’s) is the belief that
children should be raised by a mother and a father, more precisely their
biological mother and father, as she states here;

for a long time, I hesitated to write
about gay marriage, simply because gay people have been so discriminated
against. What then, tipped the balance for me? It is the belief that
wherever possible, a child should be reared by a mother and a father,
and that children have the right to know and have a relationship with
their biological parents.

For the purposes of this article I will not argue against this logic,
in fact, I will accept it. The reason being is to show how this logic
is flawed and is no reason to object to equal marriage, which leads me
to belief there is an ulterior motive behind their opposition.

Same-sex couples have four methods
available to them in order to have children: surrogacy, sperm donation,
adoption, previous heterosexual relationship. I will immediately remove
children from a previous relationship as just like any other split
relationship they have a biological mother and father. This leaves
surrogacy, sperm donation, and adoption. These options are and will be
legislated completely independently of equal marriage.

And let’s assume
Iona get their way and surrogacy, sperm donation are banned and only
heterosexual couples can adopt.

Will homosexuals still want to get
married? Yes.

This shows how they are two different issues, yet Iona
treats them synonymously. Worse again is the fact Iona is against
surrogacy and (anonymous) sperm donation, this overwhelmingly effects
heterosexual people far more than it does homosexual couples. Yet Iona
invests far more time arguing against equal marriage, even though it’s a
totally separate issue, than they do arguing against surrogacy and
sperm donation. Surely they would be better off targeting the issue as a
whole rather than sacrificing the happiness of homosexuals to simply
stop a mere portion of what they are against.

But would they even
achieve that? Would homosexuals be prevented from having children if
they can’t get married? No. Because, a I said previously, legislation
for surrogacy, sperm donation, and adoption is totally separate from
equal marriage as those issues overwhelming effect heterosexual couples.

So why does Iona argue against equal
marriage when their objection a) is totally separate from equal
marriage, b) even with their objection realised homosexuals will still
want to get married and c) can still achieve objectives without having
to deny equal marriage to homosexuals?

The answer to that question is unknown to
me, but to deny homosexuals equality and happiness for objections which
effect heterosexuals more and can be achieved without refusing equal
status is, without a doubt, homophobic.

Conclusion

In short, the below points are homophobic tendencies which have displayed by Iona, Breda O’Brien and John Waters.

Blatantly misrepresent research to portray homosexual parenting as inferior to heterosexual parenting;

Ignore decades of scientific research;

Invent reasons to negate the studies such as “small sample-size” as this is the preferred methodology;

Accept and promote research by somebody who was paid to ensure a preset conclusion to use in an argument against equal marriage;

Ignoring the true intentions for why homosexuals want to get married;

Attach malicious motivations;

Fear-monger by saying homosexuals only want to destroy marriage;

Employ rationale against equal marriage when even if realised still wouldn’t stop homosexuals wanting to get married;

Ignore the fact that these issues effect heterosexuals more;

Using the issue of equal marriage in a vain attempt to achieve part of their goal instead of tackling the issue as a whole;

Sacrificing the happiness of homosexuals in an attempt to achieve objectives which could be achieved without denying equality.

All the above are homophobic, some more than others but they are
certainly homophobic.

This isn’t simply “opinion” or “ethos” or
“tradition”, this is research manipulation, this fear-mongering, this is
mistrust, this is using homosexuals as patsies to achieve wider aims,
this is homophobia.

So, yeah, I think Rory O’Neill got it right. If anything he was probably a bit too nice.